Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to the Life Refresh podcast. My name is Ryan Robinson, and if you are looking for a podcast that is designed to uplift, encourage and revive your heart, mind, and spirit, you're in the right place. Welcome to the journey of Becoming the version of You God designed from the foundations of the earth. Now, let's begin.
Speaker 0 00:00:26 Hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Life Refresh podcast. Hey, if you got a minute, um, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. Tell some people that you know, that we are talking about some amazing things we talked about. We talk about everything from Christ to mindset, to just being practical in, in belief systems and what that looks like for us and how those things manifest in us and around us in our relationships and how we connect with those outside of, uh, ourselves. So I'm excited to kind of talk about this new, I won't call it a new concept, but it is something I feel like most people generally struggle with. We talk about a, we talked about a, a real, uh, a struggling conversation before and, and a and a previous podcast, uh, around mindset and, and faith. But this one is something I feel like sits within our minds often, and it is the concept and idea of being both and okay, being both and, um, both.
Speaker 0 00:01:35 And, and again, personally, just for a little note from my, for, for my listeners here, um, both and is a very difficult place to be in it, it doesn't make sense. We, as human beings are wired to make sense out of complicated things. So what we do when we have a challenge or we don't know what to say or make, uh, make up, we'll make up a story that makes sense to us and makes us feel better. And essentially, by doing such an activity, it actually makes us feel like we're in control, that we understand what's going on, that we are capable of managing said issues and challenges to the Mth degree with confidence. But the, the problem is most of the things that we deal with in the world are, are, can be gray. I mean, let's just, let's just call a spade a spade.
Speaker 0 00:02:32 Not everything is cut and dry. Many things, some things are, but, uh, most things have some gray space in it. Um, the, the, the basis of both and is actually a newer psychological term. And I kind of pulled mine from the, the, the bible a bit by utilizing one of the biblical characters, king David, king David occupationally, again by his intro name, by the name, how I introduce him as king. He was the king, second king of Israel. But the thing is, he was also a musician who wrote the book of Psalms. He was also a warrior, which was found in the books of our first and second Samuel, first and second kings, and first and second Chronicles in the Old Testament where we find David is a g he's a cold, he's a stone cold-blooded killer. I mean, he, he, he, he's a bad dude like <laugh>, you don't mess with David.
Speaker 0 00:03:35 It's said that he, he, he was just that bad. I was gonna give an example of what's in the Bible. It's a little graphic. So, um, if you ever want to Google, I would say Google it, or maybe not Google it, <laugh> look it up in the Bible. Um, or use a, um, Bible gateway to talk about King David as a warrior. The the initial piece that actually got David in trouble with King Saul was that, uh, the ladies said, Saul has killed his thousands, but David, his tens of thousands. So when the ladies starts saying something about you, you have to be a bad dude. So <laugh>. Um, but, uh, the thing is he embraced a both and mindset by many means. He wasn't perfect, but he did understand who he was in God, he had a relationship with God, and therefore his relationship granted him access, that we get a preview to see in the Old Testament, that is something that is desire to be replicated by the coming of Jesus in the New Testament.
Speaker 0 00:04:41 So being able to come boldly to the throne of grace and pray to God and ask God for certain things, are it all, were all examples of what David was able to do with his particular relationship with God, that he was in many cases a trailblazer. So it is from this particular perspective that I am bringing to you all that David, uh, uh, in the bible, a warrior, a worshiper, a sing, a songwriter, a king, a political leader, um, in many other things, a prophet in in in Psalms as well. You can be all these things, our culture these days is built upon in either or mindset. I'll come back to, to either or here in a moment, but let me give you the basis of both and the basis of both. And is that multiple things can be true at the same time and that everyone has a right to their existence regardless of what somebody else is experiencing.
Speaker 0 00:05:39 Even though this may not be a re uh, a revolutionary thought in itself. We are in a world that promotes se zero sum approaches, individualization to specific areas, and that you can't go beyond that particular area or skillset or gifting or whatever you may have, because that is not defined for you. These are your lanes. This is where you live, you don't move past it. Um, and you are individually stuck on a situation because you have not embraced all of you. If David was just a warrior, he'd be a murderer. If he wasn't a worshiper as well, he wouldn't have anything to balance it out. So there are aspects and facets of our life by which being both and helps our entire being, getting real practical. Um, I'm a parent, I have two children and I'm also a husband, um, but I'm also a son all the same time, y'all.
Speaker 0 00:06:35 It just depends on what setting I'm in. It pulls some peace out of me if I'm, if with with I'm with when I'm with my kids, I'm dad. When I'm with my wife, I'm husband when I'm with my mom or my my dad, I'm son. But those roles are fluid depending on where you are, environment, circumstances, et cetera. Now imagine being that mode with your parents. They'd be like, what's wrong with you, <laugh>? I mean, if you're grown enough, they'd be like, what are you doing? I am not your kid. And again, sometimes their sparks will fly in. Love that I'm still the parent no matter what's happening. If you're, if your parents are blessed to still be around, those are some really integral details that we are all of these things. We are brothers, we are sisters, we are friends, we are cousins. But depending on who we are with, who we are in relationship with, determines how I show up for you.
Speaker 0 00:07:37 Ooh, I'm gonna say that one more time. Depending on who I am in relationship with, determines how I show up for you. So if my daughter needs daddy, dad gone at Daddy's gonna show up. It is such a powerful insight, y'all to who we are as individuals. So we just can't cut ourselves off. We might be occupationally gifted to be a writer, okay? But writing is not limited to one specific genre or industry. You can be a songwriter, you can write for film, you can write for blogs, you can write for podcasts, you can write for books. There's so many things that you can do because you have the gift to write. So to limit oneself to a particular area is actually not giving your gifting the ability to grow. This thought process can actually crack your worldwide open and make you a aware of possibilities that your gifting can give you.
Speaker 0 00:08:47 Okay? So both Anne says that you can and almost certainly will feel more than one thing at a time so you can feel grateful and you can be resentful of pressures at the same time and both, and honors the full complicated reality that life presents. So when you experience something like a loss, you can also feel grief and relief at times. You can both feel sadness and gratitude, overwhelmed and anger. We can feel, we can be both devastated by the loss and confident at the same time that the ending of the relationship was the right thing. Even though it sucks. See, if you've only had one perspective of both, and it would be damaging if you were just sad all the time and didn't have any hope, you'd just be depressed. If you're happy all the time, you'd be Pollyanna. And nobody wants to be around that because that's not real.
Speaker 0 00:09:49 That's not real. And I think those are some things that we as people, and again, I said this as culture, we have not learned to embrace the full tapestry of being human, the complications that we have, the intricacies of being, um, to love and to hate sometime to be good and to be bad, to be frustrated, but also to be excited. Like these things. Y'all are the things that make us human. And to not embrace that is to not embrace a piece of you. Most people sometimes say, I, you know, I don't get angry. You may get, this is the thing Bible says, you can be angry. You can be angry, but Bible says, do not sin. Cause anger can lead to sin. If you get mad so much, you wanna punch somebody in the face, that's not the kind of anger, that's not what you want.
Speaker 0 00:10:41 You can be angry, but you don't have to do any, you, you can do something with the anger, but don't punch somebody in the face. That's one many options. But I'm using that for an illustration because that's just the one that came to my head. You can be both, you can be angry and you can be grateful. Yes, it feels confusing <laugh>, because how can I have these two feelings that conflict with themselves, but also my, I'm, I'm, I have joy about something. I'm, I'm okay, I'm cool. I just need a minute. I, I, I think those are some really hard challenges for many of us to, to understand is that we're both, and there, there is, um, I, I want to even, even, um, Jesus was both and I'm gonna say that again. Even Jesus was both and Jesus was God and man at the same time.
Speaker 0 00:11:36 How we can't even make sense of what that is. How are you human and how are you God? At the same time, how are you happy and how are you sad at the same time? I just went off a tangent, but you understand what I'm saying, Jesus is the God man both at the same time, equally at the same time. Okay? Now, where do we get this? Um, it is actually found in the book of John, John chapter one. And this is considered like the, if anything, if any, if you're a new babe in Christ, we say the book of John is like first book you need to read. It has everything in it to do and to deal with one who God is and gives you the synopsis of all the top things that depict Jesus. John did an amazing job with this book.
Speaker 0 00:12:31 So there are four gospels. John is the fourth book in the gospel, or we call it, it is called the fourth book, meaning it being one of four call, uh, from books called, uh, from Matthew, mark, and Luke and John. Those are the four gospels that depict Jesus Christ's Lord, not just as, but depict his life where he came from and all the things that he came to fulfill, uh, as the, the perfect sacrifice for us. But the first three books that I mentioned, Matthew, mark, and Luke are called synaptic gospels, meaning they have one view, okay? They're only one-sided view. And we, I, again, we'll talk about this in the next part, but they only give one viewpoint of what God is or what Jesus is to the people, okay? And that perspective is based upon their area of expertise. Okay? So for example, Matthew was a tax collector.
Speaker 0 00:13:30 So he has a lot of numbers in his gospel. Luke was a physician, has a lot of detail in it, just giving you two examples of, of what that may mean. So you have this view of what God is or Jesus is in these scriptures, and that's why they're called it synoptic gospel. Now, John being the fourth gospel gives a very well rounded view of Jesus Christ, where he came, like what happened, how he's here. Um, and I'm gonna just read like the first five verses and then really get to the core part and then we'll conclude. But John chapter one says, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God. And the word was God. He was in the beginning with God and all things that were made through him. And without him, nothing was made. That was made in him was life, and life was the light of man of men.
Speaker 0 00:14:25 And the light shines in the darkness, in the darkness did not comprehend it. So Jesus. So the word is Jesus, Jesus is the word. Therefore, he's, he speaks the word and the word becomes flesh. That is Jesus. So, you know, we continue to read like he came into the world, he was made, uh, wrapped in born really as a human, did the will of his father, and was the example of what we need to follow, uh, to have, right, right standing with God. Okay? So, um, the, the, the part here, and I alluded to it, I almost skipped over it, but, uh, verse 14 is where I want to kind of land the plane a little bit. Verse 14 says, and the word became flesh and duetta among us, meaning that Jesus, the word became flesh, was born and duet among us, and we beheld his glory and the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.
Speaker 0 00:15:25 Here it is full of grace and truth. Boom, here it is full of grace and truth. What does that mean? Jesus came to not only give us grace, but he also told us the truth. Okay, let me give you an example. <laugh>, I have some friends that are like this, but if you're going and if you're in the, you know, store and you gotta, you know, something on your face, you got crumb in your beard or you got something on your shirt, um, and you're talking to people and people don't even know, so you got something in between your teeth, okay? The truth is, a friend will tell you, Hey man, you got something in your teeth or you got something in your beer, can you what? Wipe that off right quick, right? That's the truth. But how they delivered it was with grace. They didn't call you out in the middle of the group and say, Hey man, like look, hey bro, you have something on your face.
Speaker 0 00:16:26 You need to do that right now. No, they did it tactfully. They did it with care. They did it with a sense of love towards you because they didn't want you to be embarrassed. Cuz sometimes the truth hurts, but if it's wrapped in the the wrappings of grace, it may be better received. So sometimes many of us alike to just say, Hey, we're just being real. We're telling the truth. But really what we're doing is we're just being rude. I'm gonna hear that again. I'm gonna say it again, but I might hear that afterwards. Sometimes we just say that we're telling the truth as an excuse to be rude, that I'm just real y'all. And then sometimes what we do is we are so gracious that we never confront anything, so we let too much stuff go because oh, we're being gracious. But when really something or someone needs to be confronted and they need to be confronted with the truth, you have to have both.
Speaker 0 00:17:20 And Jesus is the perfect example of what both and looks like. Literally. You have to be able to one, understand that you can be both, that you can be an artist and an athlete. We've seen it, we've seen it with millions of people and maybe those that you see online on Instagram, more on, um, in movies where we've seen them not limit themselves to just being one kind of person, but they've allowed themselves to explore because they don't want their world to be so limited. Okay, I'm gonna stop here cause I, there's so much more left. We'll continue on this topic of both and, but you know what we're gonna do? We're actually gonna take, uh, the inverse of this and we're gonna talk a little bit about either or. So I'm gonna finish up some both and topics and some areas by which we've expressed both and, but, uh, we're also gonna talk about the dangers of an either or mindset and, and what that does to us. Make sure you keep it locked here. Share the podcast, John, I believe wholeheartedly that this can help somebody or this is helping somebody. Uh, so make sure you rate this podcast and let someone know. Until next time, take care.
